Disclaimer: I do not own the His Dark Materials Series.

A/N: Hey, everyone! Here is the next installment of the story, which is getting some inspiration (and lines) from the BBC show. I've enjoyed watching it and am enjoying writing this piece again. I hope you enjoy it, too :) have a good one! I will try my best to update soon.

Luxurious Lies

43.

Righteous Reality

Jordan College was not the same Jordan College Lyra had known and loved her entire life.

When she and Pan turned the corner of Manor Road, they noticed one big, noticeable change: Magisterium forces. They'd seen one or two back at Wordsworth College, but the presence here was tenfold. One guard stood on each side of the main entrance, with one peppered every so often along the main wall of the building. They stood silent and still in the early hours of the evening, staring straight ahead with hands rested on the helm of their weapons.

They're looking for us, Pan thought to her, taking in the sight and putting two and two together. They must think we'd return here after escaping.

Jordan had quite the upset after Lyra left. She'd heard the rumors. After she'd escaped from Mrs. Coulter's flat in London, the entire college was searched up and down for evidence of heretical activity. Some say it was Mrs. Coulter who marched into the college and yelled "tear everything apart!" after a meeting with the Master. Some say it was the Head of the Court of Consistorial Court of Discpline himself, who'd heard whispers of an item precious to the Church residing at Jordan and who would stop at nothing to find it. And others even claimed it was a mysterious figure who'd come in the dead of night and stolen the priciest of belongings, never to be seen or heard from again.

Which one was true Lyra didn't exactly know, nor did she care. The damage was immense and the relationship between the College and Church permanently strained. Lyra could always ask the alethiometer, but she had more pressing matters to attend to: what Lord Asriel was doing in the North and what Jordan was doing to help him. Or hurt him.

That part had always been clear to Lyra. Ever since she'd first heard about Dust and learned about Lord Asriel's travels, she'd wanted to help him. She chased him back to the North and held onto her faith in him even while traveling with Mrs. Coulter, learning more about him from living with him. Now, she sought to help him still as she found herself locked outside of the home he'd delivered her to all those years ago.

"What are we going to do, Pan?" Hiding in the shadows need a riverbed, Lyra scanned the college grounds up and down. The Magisterium was everywhere. There was no way she'd be able to slip by them, even now in the darkness of night. They clearly wanted to know every single person entering and leaving, but Lyra couldn't let them know that she was in Oxford, let alone at Jordan.

As they crouched there in the dark trying to decide what to do, a rabbit ran by them in the clearing. Pan's cat ears twitched and watched as the small animal criss-crossed through the brush and then disappeared into a dam.

"That's it!" Pan changed into a mouse and scurried forward, following the rabbit's trail. "Through here, Lyra! Remember, the little courtyard by where the dams come through?"

It was a brilliant plan that became less brilliant as Lyra squeezed through the ducts and followed the water trail up, her clothes completely soaked through as she struggled to keep her head above water. Mrs. Coulter would be appalled. When they made it through, Lyra wrung out the excess water from her dress and her overcoat as Pan scanned ahead as a moth and found the side entrance to the college.

"Excellent, but let's never do that again." The two laughed as they snuck inside the building, coming to a fast halt at a man staring down sternly at them from the end of the hallway.

Lyra blinked, but then she recognized him at once: the old Librarian, who'd taught her and chased after her and lectured her time and time again during her youthful days in Oxford. She opened her mouth to speak, to say something, anything, but he merely put a finger to his lip and shook his head slightly.

"Not here," he all but whispered, looking around them carefully before holding out his hand and gesturing for her to hurry it up.

It was one of those funny moments in life where you have to make a quick decision and stand by it. To trust him or not to trust him; to go with him or stomp on his foot and run away in the opposite direction. Lyra felt like all of her time away and in the North had prepared her for this moment. She'd made the decision to distrust Mrs. Coulter and run away from her, all for the best. She'd chosen to trust the Gyptians and follow them North to Trollesund, which was safest and wisest at the time. Yet again with Mrs. Coulter she faced a decision and decide to trust her instead, following her through the arctic and learning of grand ambitions and battles that were much larger than Lyra had initially anticipated when she thought about saving the missing children.

And here she was again, faced with the decision of whether or not to trust this man whom she'd known her entire life. She could consult the alethiometer, which was safe and dry in her waterproof case, but there wasn't time. She had to act now.

"Alright," she finally said, taking his extended hand and allowing him to whisk her through the hallway and through a flight of stairs.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

He didn't want to do it.

Lord Asriel wasn't a heartless man. He wasn't the most sentimental by any means, but he did care about things. About people. About Lyra, despite what Mrs. Coulter or anyone else would say.

He cared about the people whose lives were controlled and contained by the sheer force of the Magisterium, who seized power after Pope John Calvin moved their seat to Geneva and gave the bloody Consistorial Court the authority to lawfully punish and investigate anyone they pleased. He cared about the children who went missing due to the covert operations of the Oblation Board and their all-mighty funding source. He cared about the brave men and women from around the world who sailed on their boats to the North to save their children and everyone else's children.

But caring had its consequences. Caring made you weak. Caring made you careless. Lord Asriel experienced that himself when it came to Lyra. He'd let her slip from his hands not once but multiple times after she'd left Jordan. It was because of the care he felt for her that he let himself get distracted and let himself make decisions with his heart instead of his head. He knew these consequences extremely well and now worked to rectify him, because of them but also in spite of them.

But this… This time it was different. This time was more terrible than anything else before. Lord Asriel eyed the blade of the machine carefully, tracing his fingers along the specially-coated edge. Stelmaria growled. Lord Asriel swallowed. The room stirred.

"It has to be done," he murmured to her, fingers away from the blade and now resting on the edge of the controls.

"I know," she murmured back, eyes trained on the controls with her human.

After a few minutes, the door opened and Serafina glided inside, followed by a young child.

"Are you sure this is what you want?" she asked him. The child beside her cringed, holding onto her hand and staring at the blade with a profound fear Lord Asriel had never seen in someone so young.

"Yes."

Yet, no. Lord Asriel hesitated as he beckoned the child over to him. He smiled, giving another wave, and the child approached slowly, warily, his wolf cub daemon glowered over from behind his legs.

His daemon knows, Stelmaria thought to him, and Lord Asriel's stomach dropped.

They'd captured a wild Tartar child a ways north of here, with Serafina coaxing him in with the majestic radiance and persuasion only a witch could truly muster. He'd come with her willingly and trustingly, his sprawling wolf pup of a daemon trotting along beside him. They burst into the facility not understanding that they were walking directly into the end of their existence as they knew it.

Again, Lord Asriel didn't want to do it. As he patted the boy on the shoulder and lifted him up into the chamber, with Stelmaria nudging the pup into the other side, Lord Asriel thought again of Mrs. Coulter and the Oblation Board and their experiments and the savagery of it all.

But what we're doing is different, Stelmara tried to remind him as he nodded to Serafina to turn off the lights. She complied, and Lord Asriel set up his photogram machine, angling it to capture the boy, his daemon, and the blade.

So we tell ourselves, he all but sighed, nodding once more to Serafina and then motioning to Stelmaria. His daemon locked eyes with him once before putting her teeth on the lever and pushing down. Blinding light enshrouded the room as the blade began to cut down. Lord Asriel clicked away as the boy screamed and reached out for his daemon, who was trapped in the other side and unable to reach over to him and unable to transform.

Lord Asriel would remember those screams and the howl of that wolf for as long as he lived. Yet he continued to click and capture as the blade drew down and down until coming to the end and slowly fading away.

The boy was unconscious on the right while his daemon completely gone on the left. Stelmaria was shaking, and Lord Asriel wove his hand tightly into her neck fur as he nodded again to Seragina and the lights came back on.

I'm going to be sick, the snow leopard rattled to him, her eyes stuck on the left cage as she began to sank down.

"Me, too," Lord Asriel said out loud, trying to steady his breathing as he looked over at the boy and then over at Serafina, whose eyes were gazing steadily into his and asking him the same question he was asking himself:

What have you done?